


Life Goes On

by jack_inaboxx



Series: crack in the glass [27]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Other, anwyay uhhh, here it is i guess?, in fact i'm not sure i even have a verse this fits in, this is not canon!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-06
Updated: 2020-06-06
Packaged: 2021-03-03 23:34:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24563941
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jack_inaboxx/pseuds/jack_inaboxx
Summary: Losing someone you love isn't easy.
Relationships: Alex | Alexis Daher & Antonio, Alex | Alexis Daher/Mal Riviere
Series: crack in the glass [27]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1774129





	Life Goes On

Mal ~~dies~~

Mal is murdered. 

The Feds find their body pinned to the wall with nails driven through their wrists and shoulders. Their killer has spray painted wings and a halo over their body in a garish shade of yellow, a mockery of all that Mal was to him. 

(He thinks of whispers against their skin, _my angel, my light, my love_ , and feels sick at the twisted lie it’s become in his memory) 

They- the Feds, the cops- expect him to break down, he knows. They had all known of how close he and Mal had been, they’ve seen this before. They’ve lost people, all of them, some way or another. 

He doesn’t. 

What he does is cover his eyes, and then run his hands down his face, slowly, smothering any emotion that might dare to show itself. 

He stares at- at- at the corpse for another minute, face eerily blank, and breathes. 

In.

Out.

In.

Out. 

There’s no other sound in the room, all of them staring at him, waiting for the break. 

He turns around, and walks out, still emotionless, stride steady and unwavering.   
(His hands shake, but he forces them still.) 

For six days, everything is normal. 

Everyone he works with is watching him like they’d watch a live bomb. He understands; he’s been acting as though nothing had happened, shooting down any mention of it with cold efficiency. 

Nothing is normal. 

He almost shatters when he chips her their favorite mug, because he’s trying so hard not to break anything, not to dirty anything, as he packs everything that was theirs away.   
The apartment is almost bare, because all that had been colorful, all the life, had been theirs, and now it’s gone, _they’re gone and they’re never coming back-_

He takes a breath, glues the chip back on, and carefully fixes the paint himself before tucking it in with the rest, carefully padded, and hidden under the loose boards in the basement. 

Nothing is normal, nothing is not normal. 

He lies on the floor (the bed is dismantled, stashed under the basement floor with the rest) and stares at an empty ceiling, repeating the same words in his mind, over and over and over. Their last words to him. 

A thought solidifies in his mind over the mantra, and he blinks, quietly, and suddenly there is purpose to his life again. 

The Feds are alarmed when he suddenly stops working Mal’s case after being so insistent on staying on it for days. 

He ignores them and digs up cold cases, looking for anything relating to the death of a cop’s lover. 

He finds four, and all have the same spray-paint marks as Mal had, each containing statements that the cops (or Feds, or whatever other unlucky law-enforcement officer) had given about the paint tainting their memories of endearments they’d use with their lovers. 

Everyone goes silent when he sets the files on the table in the middle of the meeting. He doesn’t do it hard; in fact, it’s quite gentle. 

They still stare at him like he’s grown a second head. It’s so strong a look that he has to resist the urge to check. 

“I’ll be back in a week,” he says, the most words he’s spoken since Mal- 

The room erupts in a chorus of ‘no’ and absolutely not’ and various other demands for stillness, pause for thought, refusals. 

He ignores them all, and walks out with the same emotionless steadiness that carried him through the last several days. 

He’s back in a week, covered in blood and grime and half-dead.   
They save his life, and he’s not particularly pleased about it, but he moves on, and he keeps living, because that’s what Mal would want from him. 

At work, he still carries on as though nothing’s changed, and eventually the rest get with the game and act that way as well, and that’s what lets him start to mourn, finally.   
Oh, he’s still professional, when at work he continues as though everything is normal. It’s easiest that way, and it means he can provide himself a little bit of stability while he lets himself fall apart. 

The apartment is still empty, but not of people, not anymore. Antonio brings the necessities with him when he moves in, mattresses, food, cooking tools. Antonio lets him weep into his sweater when he breaks down, holds him when he shivers and calms him when he screams himself awake. 

Gradually, he heals. It’s not okay, not really, but he heals. 

Nobody talks about the week he spent away, the one where forty-six men and women turned up dead all over the world, each with an identical wedding ring in their skull. Nobody talks about how illegal it is- no matter that every one had been a major player in a huge human trafficking ring- or how he’s only safe because he’s a Fed and the Feds are, beyond everything, corrupt. 

Nobody talks about the blackmail he collected, either, but they know anyway. Things shape up a little. Mal’s dream was always to join the Feds, but they hated that the whole thing was corrupt, and they were always coming up with plans to fix it. Fanciful, but they had been determined; and he thinks that maybe they would have managed it, too. 

So he cleans it up, a little at a time. It’s no easy task, and he has no illusions, he’ll probably be killed before it reaches anything close to respectable. 

Oddly enough, he finds he doesn’t mind. 

Life goes on, and so does he, eventually.


End file.
